


Full of Grace (Blood on Our Hands)

by calenlily



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e22 Becoming Part 2, F/M, Fix-It, still pretty angsty though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27130876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenlily/pseuds/calenlily
Summary: Angelus never gets a chance to pull the sword from Acathla. A hurt/comfort rewrite for a hurt no comfort episode.
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47
Collections: I Will Remember You





	Full of Grace (Blood on Our Hands)

Buffy arrives at the mansion none too soon; Angelus has already begun the ritual to waken Acathla.

Flanked by Spike and Drusilla and a pair of minions, the dark-haired vampire stands before the hideous stone demon. “Now, Acathla, you will be free,” he intones, and slices open his palm with a dagger that Drusilla hands him. “And so will we all.”

Buffy approaches quietly while the vampires’ attention is focused on the tableau, and makes her presence known by decapitating one of the minions with a swing of her sword. The others swing around to face her as it crumbles to dust. “Hello, lover.”

“I don’t have time for you,” Angelus says, irritated.

“You don’t have a lot of time left,” Buffy shoots back.

“Coming on kind of strong, don’t you think?” he says, arrogant as ever. “You’re playing some deep odds here. Do you really think you can take us all on?”

She would have given it her best shot if it had come to that, but under the circumstances she is confident in the knowledge that she doesn’t have to. “No, I don’t,” she replies calmly.

Before he can respond to that, Spike rises from his wheelchair and whacks him in the back of the head with a metal bar. Angelus goes down hard, collapsing to the floor, and Spike continues to rain blows on him.

Satisfied that her most dangerous enemy is out of commission for the time being, Buffy makes for Drusilla, but the remaining minion rushes her before she can reach the vampiress.

The second minion puts up a good enough fight to occupy her attention for a minute or two. She dispatches it just in time to see Angelus rise and regain his feet. He reaches for the blade sticking out of Acathla, and Buffy seizes up her forgotten sword and flies across the room, interposing her body between vampire and stone demon before he can lay hands on his objective.

He ducks under the first slash of her sword, rolls and comes up clutching the ritual dagger. Metal rings against metal as he uses the dagger to parry her next few thrusts.

Ruthlessly she drives him back, intent on putting as much room as possible between them and the demonic statue. She breathes a little easier when the fight moves through an archway and out into the courtyard.

She has him on the defensive at first, working hard to counter or avoid each stroke of her blade, but the difference in their armament proves to matter less than she’d like. He gets in close under her guard to elbow her in the face, and his dagger slashes across her forearm as he pulls away. Then he abandons the dagger to shove a stone pedestal at her; she cannot wholly avoid the impact, and it’s all she can do to keep her footing and her grip on the sword.

She jumps up onto the stone rim surrounding the skeleton of an ornamental tree, then down and into a crouch to duck under a high kick. As she springs back up she sweeps out with her sword, but his booted foot comes down on its end, pinning the blade to the low stone barrier and wrenching it from her grasp. His other foot strikes out to catch her in the stomach, the force of the blow propelling her across the courtyard, and in the same smooth motion he snatches up the blade. 

Scrambling back on her knees, Buffy finds herself backed against the wall as he advances upon her, menacing her with the tip of the sword. She’s going to die on her own blade. She’s going to die as nothing more to him than an obstacle to his apocalyptic ambitions.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, she thinks. Their deadly dance of the past months demanded an intimate conclusion; surely it was supposed to end in fangs and flesh. (There’s a part of her that could almost welcome her death if it came with his embrace.) Surely it wasn’t meant to end in “I don’t have time for you” and the impersonal length of steel between them. But it has and it is and while she may not care so much for her own life, she can’t just let the whole world go. Now she’s failed in every duty she has.

She braces for the blow, but it doesn’t come. Instead, the tip of the sword catches her under her chin, tilting her her head up. He is toying with her. She wishes he would hurry up and kill her already.

“Now, that’s everything, huh?” Angelus taunts. “No weapons, no friends, no hope.” She squeezes her eyes shut, unable to bear his cold gaze as the blade’s tip ghosts over her cheek in the mockery of a caress. “Take all that away, and what’s left?”

Where self-preservation has failed, irritation and pride spur her to renewed will to fight in the face of his mockery. He draws the sword back and thrusts it swiftly at her face; she feels the rush of displaced air. Lightning-fast Slayer reflexes let her track the blade’s position without looking and she swings her arms up to catch the flat of the blade tightly between the palms of her hands. “Me,” Buffy asserts, opening her eyes to meet his directly. She has failed in so many ways, but she will not fail in this last duty.

She shoves the sword away from her, so abruptly that the hilt hits him in the face. He staggers back, and she scrambles to her feet and kicks him in the chest before he can recover. The impact knocks the sword loose from his grip, and she quickly reclaims it.

With renewed energy she advances upon him, forcing him back. He stumbles over an unseen obstacle and she uses the moment he’s off balance to deliver a kick to his stomach; he falls to his knees. She raises her sword, preparing for a killing blow.

He groans suddenly, and jerks back unnaturally as his mouth opens in a silent scream. A strange orange glow lights his eyes and then fades. He collapses in on himself, gasping, and when he straightens again his whole demeanor is changed.

Wary, she holds her sword at the ready, but refrains from striking while she tries to make sense of what is going on.

He lifts his eyes to her slowly, and they are wet with tears. “Buffy?” he says softly; her name in full and it’s a question and a caress and an achingly familiar delivery. “What’s going on?”

She keeps the blade up still, disbelieving, wondering if this is some cruel trick. She well knows that the demon who wears her lover’s face is all too good an actor when he wants to be, and she will not be lured into dropping her guard so easily.

He looks to one side and the other, seeming dazed as he gets to his feet. “Where are we? I ... I don’t remember.”

There’s a sincerity and an uncertainty in his dark eyes that cannot be faked, and she cannot imagine arrogant, mocking Angelus lowering himself to act so hesitant or humble. Somehow, this must truly be... “Angel?” she breathes, lowering her sword.

His eyes lock on to the slice on her arm. “You’re hurt.” His fingers gently brush her rent sleeve.

She ignores the cut - it’s a minor wound, and had barely even registered in everything going on - and looks up at him in wonder. The sword falls from fingers gone nerveless as he pulls her to him with sudden urgency and holds her close. “Oh, Buffy... God,” he murmurs. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in months.”

In the comfort and familiarity of his embrace, the tension begins to leave her body. She closes her eyes and breathes out a deep sigh, lets his voice wash over her as it starts to sink in that he’s really back.

“Oh, my God, everything’s so muddled. I...” He clutches her closer, holding her like she’s his whole world, and turns his head to kiss her hair. “Oh, Buffy...”

And then she is crying too, sobbing into his shoulder as they cling to each other, all the burdens of the last months and this last hellish day catching up with her now that she is back in the one place she feels safe.

She doesn’t know how long they stand like that, just holding each other. Finally he pulls back enough to look into her eyes. “Buffy, what happened?” he asks again. “Why can’t I remember?”

“Shhh, it doesn’t matter now,” she tries to soothe him. He looks so lost and vulnerable that her shattered heart breaks all over again for him. She knows she owes him the truth, but how can she burden him with that knowledge?

Angel raises a hand to caress her cheek. “Tell me,” he insists.

“You lost your soul,” Buffy chokes out. “There was ... there was a loophole that none of us knew about, that a moment of perfect happiness would break the curse binding your soul to you.”

“Lost my...,” Angel repeats dumbly. “But ... oh God.”

He flinches back as if hit. At first she thinks he’s just processing the implications of her statement, but then he starts to shudder and she sees the depths of pain and horror in his eyes and she realizes that revelation seems to have been the key to unlocking his memories of the past months.

“Oh God,” he murmurs again. “Oh, no.” His knees buckle; she can’t hold him up so she sinks to the ground with him, refusing to let him go.

When he finally stops shaking, he looks down at his hand, bloodied where he’d sliced it with the ritual dagger, then to the detritus of battle strewn about the courtyard and the petrified demon visible through the archway. His gaze comes to rest on her cut arm. “I did this.”

“Not you, Angel,” Buffy insists. She holds fast to him when he tries to pull away. “You weren’t there. That’s why you didn’t remember.”

“I remember now,” he argues. “I remember doing it. It was my hands that tortured, that killed, my mind that plotted each cruelty. And the demon is still here, always a part of me. You should have killed me.”

“I couldn’t! I can’t!” Buffy exclaims. She’s crying again. “I love you, Angel, you can’t ask that of me! I’ve spent the past few months having my heart shattered and being stalked and my friends killed, but the worst of it was that you weren’t here to turn to. The worst of it was being convinced I was going to have to kill you and I’d never see you again.”

A perplexed look breaks through his cloud of guilt. “How _am_ I here now?” he asks. “If my soul’s been gone...?”

A good question, come to think of it. It occurs to her to wonder whether Willow had a change of heart, or if perhaps “kick his ass” wasn’t the message her friend had intended to be passed on. It doesn’t matter now, though. Whatever the circumstances, Buffy’s just grateful that it happened. “Ms. Calendar was working on translating the original curse before....” She falters. “Before she died.”

“Before I killed her for it, you mean.”

“It wasn’t you,” Buffy maintains, little hope though she has of convincing him. “Anyway, she’d saved a copy on disk and Willow and I found it the other day. Willow thought she’d be able to cast it; they were going to do it in the library earlier. She must have tried it again while we were fighting.”

“Willow.” He winces, sinking into self-loathing again. “I killed her fish. And Giles.... They’ll never forgive me. You shouldn’t.”

“Don’t,” she snaps, cutting him off. She knows she’s probably being selfish – she can’t begin to imagine what he’s going through – but she’s had to be strong nonstop for so long now and she just can’t anymore. “I’ve gone through hell these last months, and I forgive you because _the demon isn’t you_ , but I cannot comfort you about this right now. Mom kicked me out and I’ve been expelled from school and the police suspect me of killing Kendra, and the only reason I’m remotely functional right now is because you’re here and you’re you and I was beyond all hope of getting you back. I need you, Angel.”

“I’m here,” he says, and for the first time since he started remembering he stops trying to keep her at arm’s length. He pulls her onto his lap and his arms wrap protectively around her. “I’m so sorry, my love. I’ve got you. I’m here.”

She rests her head on his shoulder; it fits into the crook of his neck as perfectly as ever.

She doesn’t have the slightest idea where to go from here. She doesn’t know how to even begin to pick up the pieces of the mess that is her life. But somehow, some way, she can’t help feeling that it’s going to be okay now.


End file.
